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I played a game (with FAQs in place) against IG last night. He was running ~6 basilisks and 3 manticores, infantry squads, some HWT mortars... and other stuff. Guard blends together into a beautifully painted green blob after a while. I was playing DE, 20 reavers in 2 small squads and one big one, 5 talos pain engines, a squad of Grotesques (only 4 of them) and three black heart ravagers. Plus characters and troops of course. He won first turn and I was surprised at how incredibly resilient my reavers were. I had the +T drug on the big squad and Hyperstimmed them to T6, plus I used Lightning reflexes as soon as he targeted them. The basilisks killed about 4 bikes (I think 4 and 1 wound, but might have been 5), which killed all the ones I had outside of cover, so they had +1 AS when the Manticores fired, so they only killed 3 bikes (or maybe only 2) either way I still had 5 bikes left after that shooting. The mortars all fired and took 1 more wound off a bike. That was all his shooting for T1 of note. I burned another 2 CP to keep the bikes alive and on my turn tied up a bunch of tanks with reavers.

The game was an interesting one. I lost all my reavers by the end of round 2, but by then the Talos and Grotesques had closed and the Ravagers were blazing away. It was a pretty close game overall, I won in the end, but I'd lost a lot of stuff and won on objectives. Was interesting to see a game that didn't end in a tabling to be honest.

Not sure if I was super lucky or if Reavers really are just that tough, what do you think?

I think you got lucky, T4, 2W with 4+Sv is not very survivable. Luck happens though, I had a squad that made 11 out of 13 4+ saves and then made one of the 2 FnP rolls the other day, my opponent was not impressed! I think you've got the right of it though, you only need a couple to survive shooting so that you can get them into combat and tie things up.

I think people overreact to how good IG are at winning, and it sounds like you played your heart out. Well done!

Nah revers aren't tough at all - pretty lucky you didn't lose all of them turn 1.

 Imateria wrote:
I think you got lucky, T4, 2W with 4+Sv is not very survivable. Luck happens though, I had a squad that made 11 out of 13 4+ saves and then made one of the 2 FnP rolls the other day, my opponent was not impressed! I think you've got the right of it though, you only need a couple to survive shooting so that you can get them into combat and tie things up.

It didn't feel like particularly hot dice, I think the toughness 6 and -1 to hit made a difference.

T6 makes zero difference vs Basilisks and Manticores

 BaconCatBug wrote:
T6 makes zero difference vs Basilisks and Manticores

Really, am I playing wrong? I thought T6 meant that they wounded me on 3's instead of 2's.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think people overreact to how good IG are at winning, and it sounds like you played your heart out. Well done!

Thanks, yeah, it was fun, tough game though.

Drager wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think people overreact to how good IG are at winning, and it sounds like you played your heart out. Well done!

Thanks, yeah, it was fun, tough game though.

Those are the best games, in my opinion. Hopefully, your games continue to be very very tough, but also victorious!

Ravagers are shaping up to be strong. I wouldn't sleep on the Dark Eldar.

Ravagers are performing very well for me. Disintegrator mostly.with black heart rerolls they do work and are pretty resilient. T6 is nice against manticores (unless BCB is right and they still wound me on so 2s) could with the 5++/6+++ they actually take a fait but of shooting to take down. And now they can deepstrike with screaming jets they won't get shot going second (the new DS rules aren't usually a problem for them).

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think people overreact to how good IG are at winning, and it sounds like you played your heart out. Well done!

I think it comes from them being pretty middling last edition and then jumping up to a strong, top tier army. It doesn't make them OP as people were thinking. Plenty of codexes can compete against them and they're not massively ploughing through everyone.

Drager wrote:
Really, am I playing wrong? I thought T6 meant that they wounded me on 3's instead of 2's.

He's wrong. You're right. T5/6 absolutely makes a difference. T5 means basilisks wound on 3s and T6 pushes that further so manticores also wound on 3s.

Also, your rolls were not hot. I did the math. Those results are average. T6 combined with being in cover combined with lightning reflexes combined with power from pain means even the absurd firepower coming from 6 basilisks and 3 manticores only kills about 7-8 bikes on average.

It's almost like.. people on this forum massively over-exaggerate how strong guard are...

It doesn't actually sound unreasonable.

You said your bikes were T6, and there was a -1 to hit them.

A Basilisk gun against such a target gets an average of 4.5 shots, for 1.5 hits, 1 wound, and then 2 damage [since I assume AP3 will go through your save. However, since a 3 damage hit doesn't spill over, and 1 damage hits eat the next 2 or 3 damage one, killing 4-5 with 6 Basilisks sounds entirely reasonable.

A Manticore gets just under twice the average shot output, but at -1 AP. Each Manticore should perform similarly to a single Basilisk, particularly if your bikes were in cover.



Basilisks and Manticores are good, but they're not going to magically win games because they're there.

ThePorcupine wrote:

Drager wrote:
Really, am I playing wrong? I thought T6 meant that they wounded me on 3's instead of 2's.

He's wrong. You're right. T5/6 absolutely makes a difference. T5 means basilisks wound on 3s and T6 pushes that further so manticores also wound on 3s.

Also, your rolls were not hot. I did the math. Those results are average. T6 combined with being in cover combined with lightning reflexes combined with power from pain means even the absurd firepower coming from 6 basilisks and 3 manticores only kills about 7-8 bikes on average.

It's almost like.. people on this forum massively over-exaggerate how strong guard are...

Specifically, T6 itself makes no difference over T5, and since you have the potential to take Mortal Wounds from using Hyperstim Backlash to double the effect of the the +1T drug to get to T6, it sounds like a waste of CP.

You just quoted me explaining how it makes a difference. Manticores wound T5 on 2s and T6 on 3s. Is it worth it? That's questionable. But it absolutely makes a difference.

 Lion of Caliban wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think people overreact to how good IG are at winning, and it sounds like you played your heart out. Well done!

I think it comes from them being pretty middling last edition and then jumping up to a strong, top tier army. It doesn't make them OP as people were thinking. Plenty of codexes can compete against them and they're not massively ploughing through everyone.

A major part of it is top WAAC tournament players taking Imperial Soup with Guard as CP batteries and naming them 'Astra Militarum' even when the vast majority of points are spent elsewhere. Guard are one of the better armies, so people naturally see 'Astra Militarum' in the winning slot a lot and then act as if they're broken. When people go up against actual Imperial Guard armies with little to nothing outside of the codex people usually do seem surprised at just how not-broken they are.

ThePorcupine wrote:
You just quoted me explaining how it makes a difference. Manticores wound T5 on 2s and T6 on 3s. Is it worth it? That's questionable. But it absolutely makes a difference.

I hadn't realised Manticores are S10, I never see them only Basilisks.

T5/6, 2W, 4+/6+ and -1 to hit means a very resilient unit for 19ppm that can move 18+8'' plus advance and charge with the appropriate obsession.

I meant T5 vs T6 makes no difference vs Basilisks. S9 will wound both T5 and T6 on 3's

Obviously vs Manticores it'll make a difference. My bad.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I meant T5 vs T6 makes no difference vs Basilisks. S9 will wound both T5 and T6 on 3's

Obviously vs Manticores it'll make a difference. My bad.

No probelm, you are just usually very on it with the rules so genuinely thought I might be missing something.

 Blackie wrote:
T5/6, 2W, 4+/6+ and -1 to hit means a very resilient unit for 19ppm that can move 18+8'' plus advance and charge with the appropriate obsession.

Well, 19ppm and 4CP.

d3 damage weapons against those targets don't fare well,

1 damage and you wasted the shot, 2 and he has a decent chance at surviving with the 6+++, 3 and you wasted one damage. There is no good result in there.

 Imateria wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
T5/6, 2W, 4+/6+ and -1 to hit means a very resilient unit for 19ppm that can move 18+8'' plus advance and charge with the appropriate obsession.

Well, 19ppm and 4CP.

With the new battallion that generates 5 CPs, the Black Heart and the Prophets of Flesh traits the amount of available CPs is not a problem. Furthemore you tipycally just need to invest those CPs on reavers only in first turn and only if you start second.

IMHO the T6 is also redundant, you just need the -1 to hit for 2 CPs.

Yeah, the general "rule" to taming AM?IG is getting a -1 hit mod that makes the firestorm much easier to survive. Also good to hear that DE/DC can fight and win.